SCANDINAVIA - COOKING BLOOD

You know that warm, bubbly, oozing red stuff that squirts out of the slit throat of an animal while it dies a slow and painful death? Swedes make soups, puddings, and pancakes with it, and it’s totally legit. Fair enough that the practice of eating blood is held over from the days of starving peasants having to use every part of their recently-slaughtered animal, but—and running the risk of sounding like a backwards-ass Christian—where I grew up in Sacramento, California, and in most other places, the act of eating blood is looked upon as a total sin. To quote the bible, Genesis 9:3: “Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it.” In other words: it is FUCKING GROSS to pig out on blood.

But Swedes, however, seem to run no risk of spending time in hell for ingesting it. Whenever I say, “Eeeeeeeeew” from seeing the big, bloody boogers they try to pass off as food in the supermarkets, my Swedish friend Kristoffer gets all defensive and starts talking about how blood contains tons of iron and vitamins and that students eat it with noodles because it’s so cheap and nutritious. To prove a point, I decided to force him to actually cook the stuff. Like from start to finish, from slitting the throat to digesting it. To which his reaction was (of course), “No no nooo, I can’t slit the throat of a living thing!” He did agree to the cowardly Plan B: Buy the blood from people who had the balls to put their action where their mouth is, and cook it according to traditional Swedish recipes.

Be careful though, they fry real fast. It’s time to flip when the blood starts to bubble.

Kristoffer loves to wake up to a beautiful woman serving him blood pancakes in bed. How romantic.

Black Soup (“Svartsoppa”)

Last on our list of traditional Swedish blood entrees is black soup. It’s the easiest blood dish to cook. All you have to do is boil some veal broth and then stir in the strained blood and other fine ingredients like spices, booze, and fruit. If the blood is a bit frozen, push it through a pasta strainer with a fork.

After the soup has simmered for some time and thickened up, pour it into a fancy bowl and garnish it up. Now doesn’t that look nice?

I used to live in Sweden, and what I miss most of all is Blodbröd, kinda like a lightweight crispy matzo, made with blood. Can't find it anywhere in the States, and it's so good, especially with sliced cheese and cucumbers on it

yeah, there are some recipes in my culture that call for blood. it can be from chicken,pig,cow etc.One recipe is called nino envelto-literally baby in a blanket, but the recipe doesn't call for anyone to convert to cannibalism.it's pretty f'ed up.Fried blood, cilantro,hot chile, onions,peanuts,intestine and spices -a complete meal.